网页Cheng Pei-pei. Cheng Pei-pei (6 January 1946 – 17 July 2024) was a Hong Kong-American actress who started her career in 1963 and was considered cinema's first female action hero. [1][2] She was best known for King Hu 's wuxia film Come Drink with Me (1966) and Ang Lee 's wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).